Veteran vet tells his side

IMPRESSIVE PAST

SCANDAL

CALLANDER – A new book gives an inside perspective into a controversial cull of hundreds of animals at a Sundridge game farm.

In February of 1990, the Moravia Game Farm, home to hundreds of animals, was quarantined by Agriculture Canada after two animals shipped from the farm tested positive for tuberculosis.

“It was ugly because there was really no choice but to destroy (the animals) and that caused some great controversy,” explained former Department of Agriculture district veterinarian and newly published author Chuck Lockton, who spent 32 years in his role with the health of animals branch of Agriculture Canada.

“It’s very similar to the Medical Officer of Health’s job but for animals,” explained Lockton, who spent his time investigating diseases that would be considered a serious threat to the livestock industry or could be spread from animal to human.

Tuberculosis is a contagious disease caused by an infection in the lymph nodes, which is then spread to other organs like the lungs. This disease affects practically all mammals, and before control measures were adopted, was one of the major diseases of man and domestic animals, Lockton said.

In Canada, tuberculosis is a reportable disease under the Health of Animals Act, and all cases must be reported to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), formerly the Canadian Department of Agriculture.

The owner of the Sudridge game farm objected to the testing the government was relying on to determine if animals were affected, because the procedure was to kill the animal and produce a bacterial culture from their tissues. Growing the culture can take three months or more. In the meantime, the animals on the four sites owned by the farm were on total lock-down.

“There were some 500 different animals of 50 some different species,” said Lockton, of the animals involved in the slaughter, which was policy under Agriculture Canada guidelines.

The game farm was reported to contain a variety of species including llamas, bison, deer, elk, a cougar, and even a Siberian tiger.

The controversy heated up with the owner of the farm suing Agriculture Canada for damages, because no animals were to be shipped to or from the farm while under quarantine. The owner of the farm also filed an injunction to stop the slaughter, but was denied. While Agriculture Canada waited for the animals on the farm to be evaluated in order to provide compensation to the owner after the mandatory cull, the property was kept under 24-hour surveillance. The animals were said to be worth around $1 million.

At the end of September 1990, while the animals were still in quarantine, the owner of the farm called a media conference and showed reporters the carcasses of multiple dead animals on the farm, blaming the agriculture officials for scaring a baby elk into a fence where it died from its injuries, and suggesting a camel died after being kicked by a horse because the animals were forced into close quarters while the investigation took place.

Lockton said he began receiving death threats and was forced into police protection at an undisclosed site for six weeks.

“I got one threat I think was from the owner, but couldn’t prove it. But then I started getting threats from the animal rights people, and the police took that very seriously,” he said.

According to Lockton, the media didn’t know all of the details at the time.

“It got very complicated,” he said. “The person that reported to be the owner really didn’t own them.”

According to Lockton, when news of the quarantine broke, the animals’ owners starting coming forward and it became apparent that in multiple cases the farm’s operator had sold the same animal to more than one person and was collecting board from each for the same animal.

“They had a bit of a scam going,” said Lockton, noting there was no way to prove what was happening.

The owner claimed Lockton had a conflict of interest and objected to him being permitted on the land. But Lockton gained support from the East Nipissing and Parry Sound Federation of Agriculture, which held an emergency meeting in support of the slaughter of the animals, as members grew increasingly concerned their animals could contract the disease.

The controversy lasted nearly a full year and the Almaguin News covered the story every step of the way.

“The paper came down solidly on the side of the owner and it complicated my life at one time,” laughed Lockton.“I vowed I would never talk to the paper again. But my bad feelings are long since dead.”

As one of most notable culls in recent history, the Sundridge case has been cited in multiple books, including Lockton’s soon-to-be-released self-published book Back to Willow Creek.

Written in the third person, Back to Willow Creek tells the story of Lockton, a prairie farm boy with limited resources, his journey to pursue veterinary medicine and his experiences once he got there.

“Willow Creek is a creek in Alberta and is also a municipal district. It’s where I grew up,” he said.

Lockton moved to Guelph to attend veterinary school after receiving a diploma in agriculture from the Olds College School of Agriculture in Alberta, which is about to celebrate its centennial year.

“It was the opening of the door to the world,” he said of his decision to further his education in Ontario. “And it beat the hell out of cleaning up after a herd of cows.”

Lockton was married and had a son before finishing the five-year program in 1965.

He began his career later that year in North Bay as a mixed veterinarian before taking on the federal gig, and adding a daughter to his family.

Along with the Sundridge controversy, Lockton’s book describes his many adventures over the years, including traveling to the far north in his federal veterinarian role.

“I had a couple of trips to the high Arctic to work with the Inuit looking at disease in the muskox,” said Lockton of his travels to Victoria Island, an island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago that straddles the boundary between Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. “I took 120 muskox and looked at them basically like a meat inspector would to check them for disease.”

Lockton said there was a total of 1,500 people on the whole island, and 10,000 muskox.

In the late ‘80s, Lockton helped repopulate the moose in northern Michigan after clear-cut logging took away the moose browse and made better habitat for whitetail deer. According to Lockton, the deer carry brain worm, which doesn’t affect deer, but is fatal to moose. The moose population dwindled significantly.

In 1985 and 1987, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) relocated 61 moose from Algonquin Provincial Park to northwest Marquette County with the help of Agriculture Canada.

“We took live moose in the middle of winter. We tranquilized them out of a helicopter and harnessed them up and carried them out. I worked at the assembly point and tested them for disease and gave them pregnancy tests and if they passed, they shipped them off,” said Lockton. “They tried to get four a day and they crated each moose separately … then lifted crate and moose onto a truck.”

According to the MDNR, the objective of the program was to produce a population of 1,000 moose by the year 2000, but the animals didn’t end up reproducing at the rate that was expected.

Not being an avid typist, Lockton wrote the entire book longhand, and even proofread and edited the volume himself. His first book, Back to Willow Creek is being released in the next week.

Lockton is hosting a reading on Dec. 6 at Gulliver’s Quality Books and Toys on the Main Street of North Bay from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., as well as a book signing at his home located at 310 Highway 654 in Callander on Dec. 8 beginning at 2:30 p.m. For more information or to purchase a copy of the book, call 705-752-3146 or email klockton@bell.net.

Back to Willow Creek will be available for sale through Gulliver’s, as well as online at www.volumesdirect.com.